Читать книгу State Of Attack - Gary Haynes - Страница 25

Chapter 16

Tom had drawn the heavy drapes to hide the encroaching sunlight and lay asleep now on his bed, his angular face lost between two chocolate-coloured buckwheat pillows. His cellphone on the nightstand began to buzz in vibrate mode, moving around like a kid’s toy whose battery had almost juiced out. His half-limp hand stretched out and picked it up.

Yawning, he said, “Who’s this?”

“Mr Dupree?”

It was a man’s voice. Businesslike, he thought, blinking his eyes slowly like a reptile.

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“Can you be at Langley in an hour, sir?”

He rubbed his face with his free hand. “Langley? What time is it?”

“Zero one thirty, sir.”

Tom sighed. “You kiddin’ me?” He’d been asleep for the best part of eighteen hours.

“It’s important, sir.”

“Yeah. What’s this all about?”

“Your father, sir. It’s about your father, General Dupont.”

He sat up, switched on the arc light on the nightstand to his left. “What about him?”

“Langley in an hour, sir. The NHB,” the man said, referring to the New Headquarters Building.

Tom thought for a couple of seconds. “Okay.”

The line went dead.

He put the cell down back on the nightstand, pushed back the duvet and vaulted out of bed. What the hell did the CIA want to say to him about his father at this hour? he thought. As he pulled on a pair of jeans and a black sweater, he decided that trying to work that out would be an impossible task and, at best, could only lead to increasingly negative conclusions.

He knelt down, opened the drawer on his nightstand and eased out his badge and SIG. He clipped the badge to the belt on his jeans and, out of habit, released the handgun’s magazine, checking there was a full complement of twelve .357 SIG cartridges, and that the chamber was empty. Satisfied, he walked to his closet and took a nylon windbreaker from a hangar.

Apart from his time as head of the Secretary of State’s protective detail, and a couple of occasions when he’d been in the DS counterterrorism unit, he hadn’t had any interaction with the CIA. Truth was, he felt uneasy around them, not because he feared them, but rather because he found their take on the world changed with a disconcerting regularity. One day some group was an ally, the next it was a sworn enemy.

The CIA had advocated airstrikes against the Assad regime in Syria, which would bolster the Sunni jihadists there, and then a few months later, they’d advocated airstrikes against the same Sunni jihadists to bolster the Shia regime in Iraq, and he couldn’t imagine living his life in that way. Then there was Dan Crane, of course, the man who’d been saved by his father and had helped him find the secretary. The guy was a walking contradiction, too.

Thinking this he headed out of his second-storey bedroom and down the staircase without turning on the lights. Reaching his study he couldn’t remember where he’d left his small recording device. To the world, it was a fountain pen. Sam, his veteran DS driver, had told him once that when he had to meet with the CIA or Homeland Security he should tape it. Given that this meet had something to do with his father he felt it was doubly important.

He flipped the light switch. The sudden brightness had caused his tropical fish to dart for cover. The huge tank, which lined the fourth wall, appeared to be empty. It could be a full twenty minutes before they emerged from the encrusted rock formations and clumps of green plants, and begin to swim in the open again, circling the miniature Doric columns. They were timid souls, Tom thought; or perhaps paranoiac ones, like him. Not a bad trait for a fish in a tank to have. He scribbled a note for the lady cleaner to change the water and put in a fresh delayed feeder.

He got a text message, a world security update from the DS’s counterterrorism unit. Truck bomb kills thirty-four in Ankara. Two American casualties.